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Event: Interview with James Findlay, ABC NSW Regional Radio
Date: 23 September 2024, 4.10pm AEST
Speakers: Denita Wawn, CEO Master Builders Australia
Topics: Future of the Workforce Report, Labour shortages
E&OE
James Findlay, ABC Radio Host: Well, a report out today estimates the building and construction industry needs 130,000 additional workers this year to overcome workforce shortages. What are we going to do about it? Master Builders Association’s CEO is Denita Wawn. Good afternoon to you, Denita. First of all, how did we get ourselves in this situation, 130,000 extra people needed just this year? It’s not a small number.
Denita Wawn, CEO Master Builders Australia: No, it’s not. And the scary thing is that is over on top of, you know, fulfilling jobs that, with people leaving. So it’s extra over and beyond the 1.4 million people we employ. This has been decades in the making. If we recall during the 1980s everyone was encouraged to go to university, as opposed to doing vocational education and training, doing a trade, and that has continued for the last 40 years. And so we’ve now got to a situation where we’re short of all types of workers in the sector, but particularly apprentices, and that is where we need to focus our attention, because if we don’t, then we’re not going to build the houses we need to resolve the housing crisis.
James: Okay, how do we come up with 130,000 that number? How do we get there?
Denita: Yeah, it’s a calculation that our economists have done which really factors in that unusually, the country is building well, when it comes to commercial buildings, civil works and also housing. And it’s also both the west and east coast, and everything in the middle, in terms of regional Australia, and because it’s so busy everywhere, we’ve then looked at what our natural attrition is, and how many people we need to actually build the things that we need to build, whether it’s our houses, our schools, our hospitals or our roads. So they’ve factored in all those forecasts and worked out at the 130,000 extra that’s over on top of replacement numbers.
James: Wow, are there many people leaving the industry. Is that part of the problem?
Denita: It is, unfortunately, and that’s one of the things that we need to address. Is keeping people in the industry. There’s a lot of people retiring. We’re seeing the, the sort of the end of the baby boomers, starting to retire, and they are a large component of our trade qualified people. But likewise, we know that people are leaving to look at other jobs, particularly mining industry. Highly well paid. People would prefer to work in mining than construction, but nevertheless, construction is also well paid as well. So yes, we’re having people leave, and we need to attract, sorry, retain more of those. But equally, we only employ 14% of our workforce are women, only 3% of our trade workforce are women. So one of the recommendations is really focusing on, how do we attract women into the sector?
James: How does more women in the sector make it a little bit more stable? I’m assuming is what you’re looking at.
Denita: Yeah, certainly with, we know that when you have a more gender balanced workforce, you get greater productivity. And if we’ve only been attracting something like three or 4% of our trade qualified are women, as opposed to 95-96%, then we know that we’re not attracting half the work- the potential workforce, we have in the sector if we’re not encouraging women to take up a trade. So that is something we’re really proud of working towards. We have a Women Building Australia program, I encourage people to have a look at that website where all sorts of jobs are there. So that is certainly something that one of the recommendations focuses on encouraging more women.
James: Okay, so how else do we get this fixed? Because I know that the government announced at some point, well, I know that different states and territories have announced, you know, plans to get more apprentices through those schemes, but that doesn’t really solve the problem very quickly, though, does it?
Denita: No, it doesn’t. That is why we’ve also got a number of programs, sorry, recommendations in our report around migration, whether it’s utilising people already in the country, we know that there is a swathe of people in in the country that are underutilised in terms of their capacity and their qualifications. We need to support them more. And certainly, the government has given a small amount of money on a pilot program to assist but we think that needs to be expanded. We’re also calling for a tradie visa as well. New Zealand, the UK and Canada have a tradie visa, we think we need to follow suit and really focus on getting more tradies into this country.
James: What’s the, what are the blockages to getting skilled migration actually, people who are coming out on those visas or coming out into Australia but then, because I’ve heard that there are still issues of getting them on job sites, like getting all the bureaucracy, paperwork done, etc. What are the biggest issues there? Is that what you’re seeing and hearing about Denita?
Denita: Yeah, absolutely spot on. The biggest issues we have is actually getting their trades qualified and quantified and recognised in the first place. A lot more effort needs to be done to get qualifications recognised, the license, if required, and also to ensure that if they are a little bit short on those things, then what are we doing around gap training, so that, sometimes it can take up to 18 months and up to $10 – 15,000 we say that’s unacceptable. It’s certainly not something that’s going to be attractive to people who want to stay in the country and work permanently or otherwise come to the country. So we say that process needs to be resolved, but also we need to streamline visas as well, and have a connection between the visa and that qualification recognition system as well.
James: It’s 14 past four on ABC Radio New South Wales. I’m James Findlay, and with you is Denita Wawn, who’s the CEO of the Master Builders Australia, and you’re hearing about their plan to try and get more tradies into the workforce. Their report released today shows that they need 130,000 extra people in the workforce just this year. Denita, what would you say to those who, because we’ve talked about skilled migration, brings people into the country to help build houses, but there is also a houseage, housing issue at the moment, when there aren’t enough places to go around. Bringing skilled migrants in, they also need somewhere to live, how do you balance that? Because the government’s already said that they’ve cut, that they’re planning on cutting migrants to the country in different areas, one of which being students.
Denita: No, it is a quagmire, isn’t it? And a chicken and egg situation. Certainly, the situation is that we say that if, if governments are going to cut migration, it can’t be at the expense of skilled workers that are needed to build those homes. It’s quite simple. They should be prioritised. That is why we’re saying we need a specialised tradie visa to encourage and maximize the numbers coming here as quickly as possible. There is no way known we’re going to build the 1.2 million homes we need over five years if we don’t get more skilled labour. We’ve recently forecast that we’re going to fall 200,000 homes short, and certainly we need to prioritize migrants in trade qualified areas. Certainly we recognise that there are other industries wanting people here, but if we don’t get those homes built, then no one can come to the country if we’re still maintaining a housing crisis. So that is our focus at the moment, migration is a short term solution, but equally, we need to focus also on those apprentice numbers, as well as encouraging more women into the sector.
James: Are the major parties listening to your requests in regards to this, getting skilled migrants in?
Denita: Yes, certainly, there’s no doubt that both parties are recognising the importance of migration. We would like to see decisions being made sooner. There’s also been some frustrations in the system, where, for example, there was a draft skilled migration list that put things like yoga teachers and dog walkers ahead of trade, qualified people that just seemed really quite bizarre. So, you know, the bureaucrats in Canberra turn slowly in terms of change, nevertheless, there is a lot of sympathy by both major parties about the issues that are facing us as an industry in terms of ensuring that we’ve got enough workers.
James: Well good luck with where you go to next with this. We’ll talk to you again soon.
Denita: Thank you very much.
James: Denita Wawn there, the CEO of the Master Builders Australia Association.
Media contact:
Ben Conolly
Senior Advisor, Media & Public Affairs
0423 151 666
ben.conolly@masterbuilders.com.au